Award-winning Professor returns to talk analytics, tigers

Award-winning professor Dr. Bimal Roy speaks to a class during a visit to SUNY Poly in Utica on February 10, 2017.

A world-class, award-winning professor who began his career in Utica in the early 1980s returned this winter to give a presentation at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica.

On Friday, February 10 at 10 a.m., Dr. Bimal Roy delivered a presentation titled Predictive Analytics, looking at the importance of data when making inferences and understanding how data can give meaningful ideas of what might happen in the future.

From 2006 to 2007, Dr. Roy was involved in a project funded by the Government of West Bengal to find ways to estimate the Bengal Tiger population in the Sunderbans. This was one of the most illustrative examples he presented to SUNY Poly students to give them a better understanding of how predictive analytics could be used. Bengal Tigers are nocturnal, creating a challenge in tabulating how many there are. However, Dr. Roy devised a mathematical method of using paw prints of the tiger to determine how many there were in the designated area.

For all his world-renown today, Dr. Roy began his academic career in Utica in 1982 when SUNY Poly was then known as the SUNY College of Technology at Utica-Rome shortly after earning his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Waterloo. In 1984 he returned to India to accept a faculty appointment at the world-renowned Indian Statistical Institute. He married and returned in 1990 on a visiting appointment while his wife earned her master’s degree in computer science to the then-SUNY College of Technology. Upon returning to India once again, Dr. Bimal rose through the ranks to the position of Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, a position equivalent to a college presidency.

In 2015, Dr. Roy was the recipient of the prestigious Padma Shri Award, the fourth-highest civilian award in India.

With a special place in his heart for SUNY Poly, where he got his own start, he occasionally returns to provide guest lectures.

His February 10 presentation on Predictive Analytics took place in Kunsela Hall A129 Multipurpose Room of SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica and was one of only three such recent presentations by Dr. Roy throughout the United States.